Just a note that I’ll be in Boston this weekend attending the 2nd day of ROFLCon, a convention devoted to internet memes and legends. They’re having a panel on USENET on Saturday and have invited me to participate. Alas, registration is closed, but there are some parties and events on the schedule that I suspect people can go to. See you there.

This weekend I attended the annual “Robogames” competition, which took place here in the Bay Area. Robogames is mostly a robot battle competition, with a focus on heavily armed radio-controlled robots fighting in a protected arena. For several years robot fighting was big enough to rate some cable TV shows dedicated to it. The fighting is a lot of fun, but almost entirely devoid of automation — in fact efforts to use automation in battle robots have mostly been a failure.

The RC battles are fierce and violent, and today one of the weapons of choice is something heavy that spins at very high speed so that it builds up a lot of angular momentum and kinetic energy, to transfer into the enemy. People like to see robots flying through the air and losing parts to flying sparks. (I suspect this need to make robots very robust against attack makes putting sensors on the robots for automation difficult, as many weapons would quickly destroy a lot of popular sensors types.)
The games also featured a limited amount of automated robot competition. This included some lightweight (3lb and 1lb) automated battles which I did not get to watch, and some some hobby robot competitions for maze-running, line following, ribbon climbing and LEGO mindstorms. There was also semi-autonomous robot battle called “kung fu” where humanoid robots who take high level commands (like punch, and step) try to push one another over. There is also sumo, a game where robots must push the other robot out of the ring.

I had hoped the highlight would be the Robo-magellan contest. This is a hobbyist robot car competition, usually done with small robots 1 to 2 feet in length. Because it is hobbyists, and often students, the budgets are very small, and the contest is very simple. Robots must make it through a simple outdoor course to touch an orange cone about 100 yards away. They want to do this in the shortest time, but for extra points they can touch bonus cones along the way. Contestants are given GPS coordinates for the target cones. They get three tries. In this particular contest, to make it even easier, contestants were allowed to walk the course and create some extra GPS waypoints for their robots.

These extra waypoints should have made it possible to do the job with just a GPS and camera, but the hobbyists in this competition were mostly novices, and no robot reached the final cone. The winner got within 40 feet on their last run, but no performance was even remotely impressive. This was unlike past years, where I was told that 6 or more robots would reach the target and there would be real competition. This year’s poor showing was blamed on budgets, and the fact that old teams who had done well had moved on from the sport. Only 5 teams showed up.

The robots were poor for sensors. While all would have a GPS, in 1 or 2 cases the GPS systems failed and the robots quickly wandered into things. A few had sonar or touch-bars for obstacle detection, but others did not, and none of them did their obstacle detection well at all. For most, if they ran into something, that was it for that race. Some used a compass or accelerometers to help judge when to turn and where to aim, since a GPS is not very good as a compass. read more »

In the post, they are kind enough to link to my video (now back up on YouTube thanks to my disputing the Content-ID takedown) as an example of a fair use parody, and to a talk by (former) fellow EFF director Larry Lessig which incorporated some copyrighted music.

However, some of the statements in the post deserve a response. Let me start first that I hope I do understand a bit of YouTube’s motivations in creating the Content-ID system. YouTube certainly has a lot of copyright violations on it, and it’s staring down the barrel of a billion dollar lawsuit from Viacom and other legal burdens. I can understand why it wants to show the content owners that it wants to help them and wants to be their partner. It is a business and is free to host what it wants. However, it is also part of Google, whose mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” and of course to not “be evil” in the process of doing so. On the same blog, YouTube declares its dedication to free speech very eloquently. read more »

One of the greatest things that can give a region a sense of identity is the presence of a regional cuisine. In addition to identity it brings in tourists, so every region probably really wishes it had one.

Of course a real regional cuisine takes a long time to develop, even centuries. The world’s great cuisines all were a long time coming, and were often based on the presence of particular local ingredients as much as on the food culture. Some cuisines have arisen quickly, particularly fusion cuisines which arise due to immigrants mixing and from colonialism. Today the market for ingredients is global, though there are still places where particular ingredients are at their best.

One recent regional food, the “Buffalo” chicken wing, is believed to have come from a single restaurant (The Anchor Bar in Buffalo) and spread out to other local establishments and then around the world. Part of its success in spreading around the world is its simplicity and the fact that (unlike many other regional-source foods) it features ingredients found all around the world. Every town would like to have its equivalent of the Buffalo Wing.

To make this happen, I think towns should hold contests among local restaurants to develop such dishes. Restaurants might enter dishes they already specialize in, or come up with something new. The winner, by popular vote, would get their dish named after the town, and found on the menus of other competing restaurants for some period of time.

The following rules might make sense:

Ideally, the dish should try to be based on an ingredient which is available locally, and perhaps at its best locally, but which still can be found in the rest of the world so the dish can spread.

All restaurants submitting a dish must agree that should they win, they will publish recipes for the dish and claim no exclusive on it. They will, however, be the only restaurant to say they have the original dish and were the winner of the contest.

Ideally, recipes will be published in advance, so other restaurants can also make the dish during the contest, in particular restaurants that are not competing. (Competing chefs might deliberately make the dish badly.) In fact, advance publication (and a contest cookbook) might be part of the rules.

“None of the above” should be an encouraged choice on the voting form. The first round might not create a dish worthy of the town.

A panel of chefs would rate the dishes according to difficulty. Dishes that are easier would be encouraged, as these can spread more easily. The list of difficulties would be published for voters to use in making their decisions. Ie. voters might pick the 2nd most tasty dish if it’s much easier to make.

Every dish must be available in “chef-approved” form at some minimum number of restaurants, so it is easy to try each dish. Private chefs can compete if they can recruit restaurants to offer their dish.

At the end of the contest, the city’s tourist board would have a budget to promote the dish to tourists.

Voting would be done online, but voters would need to get a token to vote somewhere based on a unique ID so they can’t vote more than once. They need not pick a single dish. The “Approval” voting system, where voters can list as many dishes as they find qualified, and the one with the most votes wins, can be used.

It is certainly possible as well to have multiple winners, and the creation of variations on the winning dish would be encouraged.

Would this be an authentic regional cuisine that “comes from the people?” Of course not. But it might be tasty, and if chosen by the people, might grow into something that really belongs to that city.

In a bizarre twist of life imitating art that may be too “meta” for your brain, Constantin Films, the producer of the war movie “Downfall” has caused the takedown of my video which was put up to criticise their excessive use of takedowns.

Starting a few years ago, people started taking a clip from Downfall where Hitler goes on a rampage, and adding fake English subtitles to produce parodies on various subjects. Some were very funny and hundreds of different ones were made. Some were even made about how many parodies there were. The German studio, Constantin, did some DCMA takedowns on many of these videos.

Not to spoil things too much, but the video also makes reference to an alternate way you can get something pulled off YouTube. Studios are able to submit audio and video clips to YouTube which are “fingerprinted.” YouTube then checks all uploaded videos to see if they match the audio or video of some allegedly copyrighted work. When they match, YouTube removes the video. That’s what I have Hitler decide to do instead of more DMCA takedowns, and lo, Constantin actually ordered this, and most, though not all of the Downfall parodies are now gone from YouTube. Including mine.

Now I am sure people will debate the extent to which some of the parodies count as “fair use” under the law. But in my view, my video is about as good an example of a parody fair use as you’re going to see. It uses the clip to criticise the very producers of the clip and the takedown process. The fair use exemption to copyright infringement claims was created, in large part, to assure that copyright holders didn’t use copyright law to censor free speech. If you want to criticise content or a content creator — an important free speech right — often the best way to do that will make use of the content in question. But the lawmakers knew you would rarely get permission to use copyrighted works to make fun of them, and wanted to make sure critical views were not stifled. read more »

I’ve been predicting a great deal of innovation in cars with the arrival of robocars and other automatic driving technologies. But there’s a lot of other computerization and new electronics that will be making its way into cars, and to make that happen, we need to make the car into a platform for innovation, rather than something bought as a walled garden from the car vendor.

In the old days, it was fairly common to get a car without a radio, and to buy the radio of your choice. This happened even in higher end cars. However, the advantages in sound quality and dash integration from a factory-installed radio started to win out, especially with horizontal market Japanese companies who were both good at cars and good at radios.

For real innovation, you want a platform, where aftermarket companies come in and compete. And you want early adopters to be able to replace what they buy whenever they get the whim. We replace our computers and phones far more frequently than our cars and the radios inside them.

To facilitate this, I think the car’s radio and “occupant computer” should be merged, but split into three parts:

The speakers and power amplifier, which will probably last the life of the car, and be driven with some standard interface such as 7.1 digital audio over optical fiber.

The “guts” which probably live in the trunk or somewhere else not space constrained, and connect to the other parts

The “interface” which consists of the dashboard panel and screen, with controls, and any other controls and screens, all wired with a network to the guts.

Ideally the hookup between the interface and the guts is a standardized protocol. I think USB 3.0 can handle it and has the bandwidth to display screens on the dashboard, and on the back of the headrests for rear passenger video. Though if you want to imagine an HDTV for the passengers, its possible that we would add a video protocol (like HDMI) to the USB. But otherwise USB is general enough for everything else that will connect to the guts. USB’s main flaw is its master-slave approach, which means the guts needs to be both a master, for control of various things in the car, and a slave, for when you want to plug your laptop into the car and control elements in the car — and the radio itself.

Of course there should be USB jacks scattered around the car to plug in devices like phones and memory sticks and music players, as well as to power devices up on the dash, down in the armrests, in the trunk, under the hood, at the mirror and right behind the grille.

Finally there need to be some antenna wires. That’s harder to standardize but you can be we need antennas for AM/FM/TV, satellite radio, GPS, cellular bands, and various 802.11 protocols including the new 802.11p. In some cases, however, the right solution is just to run USB 3.0 to places an antenna might go, and then have a receiver or tranceiver with integrated antenna which mounts there. A more general solution is best.

This architecture lets us replace things with the newest and latest stuff, and lets us support new radio protocols which appear. It lets us replace the guts if we have to, and replace the interface panels, or customize them readily to particular cars. read more »

I recently stayed at the home of a friend up in Vancouver. She had some electrical wiring problems, and since I know wiring, I helped her with them as well as some computer networking issues. Very kindly she said that made me a houseguest from heaven (as opposed to the houseguests from hell we have all heard about.) I was able to leave her place better than I found it. Well, mostly.

This immediately triggered a business idea in my mind which seems like it would be cool but is, alas, probably illegal. The idea would be a service where people with guestrooms, or even temporarily vacant homes, would provide free room (and board) to qualified tradespeople who want to have a cheap vacation. Electricians, handypeople, plumbers, computer wizards, housepainters, au pairs, gardeners and even housecleaners and organizers, would stay in your house, and leave it having done some reapirs or cleanup. In some cases, like cleanup, pool maintenance and yard sweeping, the people need not be skilled professionals, they could be just about anybody.

Obviously there would need to be a lot of logistics to work out. A reliable reputation system would be needed if you’re going to trust your house to such strangers, particularly if trusting the watching of your children. You would need to know both that they are able to do the work and not about to rob you. You would want to know if they will keep the relationship a business one or expect a more friendly experience, like couch surfing.

In addition, the homeowners would need reputations of their own. Because, for a skilled tradesperson, a night of room and board is only worth a modest amount of work. You can’t give somebody a room and expect them to work the whole day on your project — or even much more than an hour. Perhaps if a whole house is given over, with rooms for the person and a whole family, more work could be expected. The homeowner may not be good at estimating the amount of work needed, and come away disappointed when told that the guest spent 2 hours on the problem and decided it was a much bigger problem.

Trading lodging for services is an ancient tradition, particularly on farms. In childcare, the “au pair” concept has institutionalized it and made it legal.

But alas, legality is the rub. The tax man will insist that both parties are making income and want to tax it, as barter is taxable. The local contractor licencing agency will insist that work be done only by locally licenced contractors, to local codes, possibly with permits and inspections. And immigration officials will insist that foreign tourists are illegally working. And there would be the odd civil disputes. An unions might tell members not to take work even from remote members of cousin unions.

The civil disputes could be kept to a minimum by making the jobs short and a good deal for the guests, since for the homeowners, the guest room was typically doing nothing anyway — thus the success of couch surfing — and making slightly more food is no big deal. But the other legal risks would probably make it illegal for a company to get in the middle of all this. At least in the company’s home country. A company based in some small nation might not be subject to remote laws. read more »

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the need for a good robocar driving simulator. Others have been on the track even earlier and are arranging a pair of robotic driving contests in simulator for some upcoming AI conferences.

The main contest is a conventional car race. It will be done in the TORCS simulator I spoke of, where people have been building robot algorithms to control race cars for some time, though not usually academic AI researchers. In addition, they’re adding a demolition derby which should be a lot of fun, though not exactly the code you want to write for safety.

This is, however, not the simulator contest I wrote about. The robots people write for use in computer racing simulators are given a pre-distilled view of the world. They learn exactly where the vehicle is, where the road edges are and where other cars are, without error. Their only concern is to drive based on the road and the physics of their vehicle and the track, and not hit things — or in the case of the derby, to deliberately hit things.

The TORCS engine is a good one, but is currently wired to do only an oval racetrack, and the maintainers, I am told, are not interested in having it support more complex street patterns.

While simulation in an environment where all the sensing problems are solved is a good start, a true robocar simulation needs simulated sensors — cameras, LIDAR, radar, GPS and the works — and then software that takes that and tries to turn it into a map of where the road is and where the vehicles and other things are. Navigation is also an important thing to work out. I will try to attend the Portland version of this conference to see this contest, however, as it should be good fun and generate interest.

But if they can’t do that, I want them to let me to print my boarding pass long before my flight. In particular, to print my return boarding pass when I print my outgoing one. That’s because I have a printer at home but often don’t have one on the road.

Of course, you can’t actually check in until close to the flight, so this boarding pass would be marked as preliminary, but still have bar codes identifying what they need to scan. On the actual day of the flight, I would check in from my phone or laptop, so they know I am coming to the plane. There’s no reason the old boarding pass’s bar codes can’t then be activated as ready to work. Sure, it might not know the gate, and the seat may even change, but such seat changes are rare and perhaps then I would need to go to a kiosk to swap the old pass for a new one. If the flight changes then I may also need to do the swap but the swap can be super easy — hold up old pass, get new one.

I could also get a short code to write on the pass when I do my same-day check-in, such code being usable to confirm the old pass has been validated.